MAMMALIA—MAN. 39 
then shown a miuature portrait of his father, which was contained in his 
mother’s watch-case ; and though he readily perceived the resemblance, yet 
he expressed his amazement how so large a face could be comprised in so 
small a compass. To him it appeared as strange as that a pint vessel should 
contain a bushel. At first, he could bear but a very small quantity of light, 
and he saw every object much larger than life; but in proportion as he 
observed objects that were in reality large, so in proportion he conceived 
the others to be diminished. Beyond the limits of what he saw, he had no 
conception of any thing. He knew that the apartment he occupied was 
only a part of the house; and yet he could not imagine how the laiter 
should appear larger than the former. Before the operation, he formed no 
great expectations of the pleasures he should receive from the new sense he 
was promised. That he might be enabled to read and write, was his grand 
object.. He said, among other things, that he could enjoy no greater delight 
from walking in the garden, with this sense, than without it; because there 
he already walked at his ease, and was acquainted with all the walks, 
With great truth he also remarked, that his blindness gave him one advan- 
tage over the rest of mankind; an advantage which, indeed, he preserved 
for a long time after he had obtained the sense of seeing ; namely, that of 
being able to walk in the night with confidence and security. No sooner, 
however, had he began to enjoy this new sense, than he was transported 
beyond measure ; and he declared that every new object was a new source 
cf delight to him; that his pleasure was so great, he had not language to 
express it. About a year after, he was carried te Epsom, where there isa 
very beautiful and a very extensive prospect; with this he seemed greatly 
charmed; and the landscape before him, he called a new method of seeing. 
He was couched in the other eye a year after the former, and of both opera- 
tions the success was equally great. When he saw with hoth eyes, every 
object appeared to him twice as large as when he saw with but one eye, 
though he did not see double, or at least he showed no marks from which 
any such conclusion might be drawn. 
There is now a living instance of Cheselden’s blind man, of whom a 
curious account has just been published. This person, whose name is 
Caspar Hauser, was by some foul means kept confined in a cell, from 
infancy to the age of about seventeen, and never had seen any object but 
the walls of his cell anda few toys. When directed to look out of the 
window upon a wide and extensive prospect, in all the glory of summer, he 
drew back with visible horror, exclaiming, ugly! ugly! About two years 
afterwards, in 1831, he was shown the same prospect, and asked why he 
called it ugly when he formerly saw it. He replied, ‘what I then saw was 
indeed very ugly. For when J looked at the window, it always appeared to 
me as if a window shutter had been placed close to my eyes, upon which a 
wall painter had spattered the contents of his different brushes, filled with 
white, blue, green, yellow, and red paint, all mingled together. Single things, 
